What Does Cage Free Really Mean?

When it comes to the food industry, it's advantageous to be skeptical. There's a lot of marketing involved and a lot of greedy corporations to be quite frank.

When it comes to factory farming, the priority is money. In the 1930s, factory farming began as a way to increase production and lower the costs of farming. Animals are treated like machines, considered devoid of emotions and thoughts, abused, neglected and exploited. It is absolutely wretched what humans are capable of when it comes to money. Beware of terms like "cage free" or "free range".

What does "cage free" or "free range" really mean? According to the USDA, the definition of free range is this: "must be produced by hens raised outdoors or with access to outdoors." All it really means is that they are not kept in a cage. They can be kept in a crowded building with a very small outdoor space that is nothing but barren dirt and feces. Contagious illnesses spread quickly in these kinds of facilities, and often large numbers of birds are slaughtered to stop a spread. Once the birds reach two years of age, they are culled (slaughtered) to make room for the next generation of producers. Chickens may live 5-10 years naturally so two years old is still very young.

So many lives are wasted, only ever knowing cruelty before it is over.

Even if you're not at all interested in the welfare of animals, there are many reasons not to buy factory farmed eggs. They're less healthy as the birds are kept on a low cost, low quality diet. The yolks are pale, lacking much of the nutrition a pasture raised egg contains, and lacking in flavor as well. Factory farming has a huge carbon footprint and is not ecologically sustainable.